Johannes Brahms

What is music? This question occupied my mind for hours last night before I fell asleep. The very existence of music is wonderful, I might even say miraculous. Its domain is between thought and phenomena. Like a twilight mediator, it hovers between spirit and matter, related to both, yet differing from each. It is spirit, but spirit subject to the measurement of time; it is matter, but matter that can dispense with space.

--Heine

Emerson has said that, next to the man who first voices a great truth, is the one who quotes it.

Truth is in the air; it belongs to all who can appreciate it; and the difference between the man who gives a truth expression and the listener who at once comprehends and repeats it, is very slight. If you understand what I say, it is because you have thought the same thoughts yourself--I merely express for you that which you already know. And so you approve and applaud, not stopping to think that you are applauding your own thought; and your heart beats fast and you say, "Yes, yes, why didn't I say that myself!"

All conversation is a sort of communion--an echoing back and forth of thoughts, feelings and emotions. We clarify our thoughts by expressing them--no idea is quite your own until you tell it to another.

Music is simply one form of expression. Its province is to impart a sublime emotion. To give himself is the controlling impulse in the heart of every artist--to impart to others the joy he feels--this is the dominant motive in his life.

Hence the poet writes, the artist paints, the sculptor models, the singer sings, the musician plays--all is expression--a giving voice to the Silence. But it is all done for others. In ministering to others the artist ministers to himself. In helping others we help ourselves. We grow strong through exercise, and only the faculties that are exercised--that is to say, expressed--become strong. Those not in use atrophy and fall victims to arrested development.

Man is the instrument of Deity--through man does Deity create. And the artist is one who expresses for others their best thoughts and feelings. He may arouse in men emotions that were dormant, and so were unguessed; but under the spell of the artist-spirit, these dormant faculties are awakened from lethargy--they are exercised, and once the thrill of life is felt through them, they will probably be exercised again and again.

All art is collaboration between the performer and the partaker--music is especially a collaboration. It is a oneness of feeling: action and reaction, an intermittent current of emotion that plays backward and forward between the player and his audience. The player is the positive pole, or masculine principle; and the audience the negative pole, or feminine principle.

In great oratory the same transposition takes place. Almost every one can recall occasions when there was an absolute fusion of thought,